Jungle people,: A Kaingáng tribe of the highlands of Brazil (A Caravelle edition) By Jules Henry
People surviving in the jungle
Does psychoanalysis of whole cultures work Yes as a young scholar Jules Henry went down to Brazil to the forests of the state of Santa Catarina to live with the Kaingang people for a couple of years He learned their language and often went on hunting expeditions with them Though I think he wished to think of them as primitives and so prime subjects for the psychoanalysis of such non Western humans I am not so sure it is all as simple as that Margaret Mead Ruth Benedict and Franz Boas had focused on psychological studies of different cultures and Henry eagerly wanted to follow in their footsteps But it wasn t easy Different people in the same culture have different psychological makeups so the scholar has to decide which are the predominant characteristics of that culture That will depend on the scholar s own makeup Hmm Many of the stories and events that he tells about took place many years before he got there in the early 1930s The Indians of his time had been re settled on a reservation and their relationship to the outside world was complex He wanted to present them as unfettered by civilization but were they such At many points I thought that they resembled the Ik described by Colin Turnbull that is people displaced from their traditional lands and removed by circumstances from their original culture They once had gardened but did no longer they had no permanent houses often sleeping in the open and obtained important tools and weapons by raiding Brazilians Henry tried to reconstruct behavior patterns from 1 what they told him and 2 what he could still observe The extent of each activity is not illuminated Still he wrote a most readable book about a people who loved sex and close relations with others but at the same time had most murderous instincts towards others These others included almost everybody Their feuds seemed endless and massacres all too common There are highly detailed sections on folklore rituals and material culture to go along with the main text The number of personal names and the constantly changing relationships among the families will probably confuse you but if it isn t an easy read it s a fascinating glimpse of a culture that at least probably existed once upon a time I recommend this book as a star in a no longer often visited corner of the anthropological universe 9783947052110
Jungle people,: A Kaingáng tribe of the highlands of Brazil (A Caravelle edition) By Jules Henry |
3947052111 |
9783947052110 |
English |
215 |
Paperback |
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